


Storyteller

by mainecoon76



Category: Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms, Sherlock Holmes - Arthur Conan Doyle
Genre: Celtic Mythology & Folklore, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Supernatural Elements, Winter Solstice, slash goggles optional
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-10
Updated: 2013-01-10
Packaged: 2017-11-25 00:06:22
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,056
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/632992
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mainecoon76/pseuds/mainecoon76
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>On a nightly winter journey in the year 1881, John Watson discovers his gift of storytelling. Unfortunately he doesn’t know yet that some tales ought to be told with caution…</p>
            </blockquote>





	Storyteller

**Author's Note:**

  * For [methylviolet10b](https://archiveofourown.org/users/methylviolet10b/gifts).



> Holmestice gift for methylviolet10b, based on a prompt for a spooky Holmesian fic on her LJ.
> 
> Betaed by mrs_sweetpeach (as usual); love & hugs to you, my dear!

I have often been asked, by friends and acquaintances who followed my literary career, how it happened that I came to be a storyteller. It is my habit to answer such enquiries with some appeasing words about the lucky combination of inclination and opportunity, and so generally quell the curiosity of the sympathetic listener who takes interest in my work. Not once have I given a soul the true account, and chances are that, should I ever break my silence, I would not be taken seriously. The one person who knows the truth – for I am convinced that he does, even though he was not witness to every detail – has never spoken a word of it since, nor do I believe he ever will.

I confess that I had an excellent role model when it came to storytelling. During the long, harsh Scottish winters of my childhood my brother Harold and I, unable to roam the countryside and try our youthful strength in playful competitions of running or tree-climbing or swimming against the stream, used to huddle before our grandparent’s fire, and while Grandpa would come in from outside and shove some freshly lumbered logs into the fire, Grandma would sit in her comfortable armchair and tell us stories of old times. They were tales full of mystery and magic, of fairies and wraiths and creatures of legend, of times when nature was alive and people knew things our modern world has forgotten. When I think of those stories I can still hear her kind voice, feel the warmth of the fire, and smell the scent of hot sweet tea, of fresh shortbread and the wet dog drying herself on the rug in front of us.

Childhood, of course, is a thing that cannot be preserved. All too soon we turned from boys to young men, our grandparents died, and my brother and I chose very different paths in life. We saw little of each other and had no way of knowing that there would be no time to make up for it until he was taken from me forever. His loss was a heavy one and I buried my memories deep within me, for it hurt to think of them and I did not think they would ever be relevant for me again.

 

It was on a cold New Year’s Night in the year 1881 when those stories were dragged to the surface of my consciousness with some force, and in the most unlikely company. 

Yet, when I am talking about unlikely, the fact that I was making my way through the picturesque rolling hills of the Cotswolds, on foot and well beyond sunset, in the company of the world’s only consulting detective, was unlikely enough. I may have been a seasoned campaigner even in those days, but to give up the comforts of a fire and a nice book on an evening like this to recover a lost signet ring, delve right into an affair of blackmail and a ghastly triple murder, and be confined and threatened with an untimely death was definitely more after the taste of my eccentric companion. 

Our path had led us through woods and fields onto a wide, snow-covered plain that glinted almost unnaturally in the bright moonlight. We could be confident enough that our daring escape from the attic of Sir Raymond Patterson’s remote 17th century country house was not likely to be discovered before sunrise, but there were other worries weighing on my mind. We were progressing slowly, for the road was covered in a thick layer of snow that hindered our steps and left a very clear trail, and the distance we still had to cover to the relative safety of Snowshill, the beautiful little village we had passed on our way to the client’s estate, would take us at least three hours at the present rate. What would have been no more than a comfortable hike on a pleasant summer’s day proved a dangerous challenge under the present circumstances, for neither of us was dressed appropriately against the chill, and I was well aware that the bout of flu I had endured the previous week had left me in a less than ideal condition for strenuous exercise. I was fiercely determined not to let my exhaustion become apparent to Holmes, for he was, from all I could tell, silent but in good spirits, and even in those early days of our friendship I was well aware that I could not deny him anything and that I would follow him into hell and back, or through the snowy countryside in the middle of a cold winter night, if need be.

We were slowly making our way along the barely visibly path, silent and each following his own train of thought, when I perceived a gleam of light trail across the sky, gone so swiftly that I would have missed it had I not lifted my eyes from the path a second earlier. To this day I do not know what induced me to speak, for I was well prepared for the dismissive answer I would receive; perhaps my conscious defenses against my deeply ingrained knowledge of old were already weakening, and my talking aloud was a way to keep my senses together. I am not sure.

“They say,” I broke the silence, and my voice seemed to ring very loudly through the wintry darkness, “that you can make a wish upon a falling star, and if you tell nobody of it, it is likely to come true.”

I received an incredulous look from my companion.

“Who says that?” he demanded, and I could hear the biting sarcasm in his voice.

I shrugged. “It’s one of the stories that are told to children.”

“Is it?” Holmes shook his head slightly, and even in the pale moonlight I could see his derisive smirk. “I can see no reason why one should delude the mind of a child in such an obvious manner.”

“Of course you don’t.” I chuckled lightly. “Though it is a bit rich, Holmes, coming from a man who claimed to have deleted the structure of the solar system from his brain attic…”

“That doesn’t make me susceptible to superstition, as you should very well know by now. The arbitrary connection between two events which may by chance correlate from time to time, depending on the nature of those events, should never be interpreted in a causal manner. One might as well teach this fundamental truth to children at the earliest possible stage. But, of course, people would rather show them how bunnies can be drawn out of a magician’s hat. No wonder that logical reasoning is so hard to come by these days.”

I smiled in spite of myself, for as much as I admired my brilliant, extraordinary friend in all his eccentric glory and youthful arrogance, I knew there were some things that were beyond his understanding. He would never see the appeal of venturing a step beyond the tangible and scientifically provable facts, even if it was only to indulge in it as a wishful fantasy. Most likely he had never hung at a storyteller’s lips as Harry and I had done all those years back, never listened with shining eyes as a world of magic and wonder unfolded itself in his mind. 

 

We fell silent after that exchange, and I felt that I may as well hold my strength together, for the strain of our march was beginning to make itself apparent. It became increasingly difficult for me to keep a steady path, and before long I recognized the familiar ache of the limbs and cold sweat that had plagued me for several days before we had set off for the country. The fever was returning, and it took no genius to understand how precarious it made my position. I had entertained some doubts whether I would be able to make the journey without problems, but now a faint twinge of desperation settled in my chest.

When I had stumbled without apparent reason for the third time in roughly ten minutes, my companion was no longer fooled by my desperate attempts to veil my declining condition.

“Watson,” he inquired with a furrowed brow. “Are you quite alright?”

“Of course, Holmes,” I returned stubbornly. “My leg is giving me a bit of trouble. Don’t heed it.”

He did not slow his steps, but his piercing eyes surveyed my person intently before an expression of dismay appeared on his gaunt face.

“Don’t attempt to make a fool of me, Watson,” he reprimanded me sternly. “You know it will not do. How bad is it?”

“I have felt better. But it is of no consequence now.”

“The flu, of course. What an ass I have been!”

“Holmes…”

“I owe you a thousand apologies, my dear friend.” He looked me in the eye, and even in the pale light of the moon I could see that his good mood had been replaced by worry. Absently I noticed how his breath was clouding in the cold, and a strand of black hair had fallen out of place and over his high forehead. He was shivering, for our coats and hats had been beyond our reach when we had made our escape; but then, such a mundane fact as freezing in the snow would never put a stop to Sherlock Holmes’ investigations.

It might put a stop to mine, though.

“I’m afraid that I cannot provide any comfort for you now, Watson, but let us double our efforts to get to safety as quickly as possible. I shall make sure there will be a bottle of brandy waiting for you before you retire.”

He offered me his arm and I accepted it gladly, and for a while we trudged on in silence. It wasn’t long before I felt my aching limbs scream with every step, and my mind became increasingly muddled. As a soldier I am accustomed to dragging my body forward under less than favorable circumstances, though, and I silently swore to myself that I would not break under the strain until my consciousness would leave me completely. 

“Watson,” Holmes broke the silence after we had thus laboriously made our way forward for what seemed an eternity, “what other stories do your people tell to children?”

“Excuse me?”

“I am finding this journey a little tiresome, and I have had the chance to observe that you are quite an accomplished narrator when it comes to telling anecdotes from your military times. I’m sure you are a gifted teller of folk tales.”

“Why on earth would you want to hear them? You have just given me a very elaborate opinion on the subject.”

“I have my reasons. Humor me, Watson, will you?”

 

So I began to relay to him the stories I had heard from my grandmother, and before long it dawned on me why he had been so insistent on the matter. As I dwelt lavishly on the terrible tales of those who fall prey to the _Kelpie_ , or the strange stories told of the _Sidhe_ that are said to be inhabiting the Highlands, or the warrior Fionn who battled against giants, I almost forgot the present strain we were enduring, and a considerable amount of time passed before I even recognized the fact, so lost had I become in my own tales. Holmes remained silent, and if he held any disdain for the raging superstition apparent in those stories, he refrained from voicing it. 

Folk tales, however, do tend to contain an element of the supernatural, the unexplainable, often horrifying presence of powers well beyond the mortals’ control and understanding. As our march went on, I was naturally drawn towards the tales that were most relevant to the season; and terrible tales they are. The Twelve Yule Nights are told to be among the most severely haunted of the entire year, and to be afoot in the dark and well outside the safe surrounding of a village on New Year’s Night would have been deemed extremely unwise by the people who preceded us. The dead, they say, walk among the living on Yule, and some would claim that animals can speak in human tongues on Christmas Night. The most terrifying apparition of all, so it is told, are the ghostly huntsmen that raid the countryside on black, spectral horses whose hooves need not touch the ground, and their hounds have fiery eyes, and the sound of their horns announces death and calamity wherever it can be heard. 

While I recounted those things to my companion, a most uncomfortable and alarming feeling grew in my chest. It was as if I was changing the fabric of the world around me, calling to life the very things I was speaking about, things that should not be awoken by a mortal being. I am not a man prone to superstition, but there in the moonlit night I perceived the whispers of unheard voices, fleeting presences around me, the eerie feeling in the back of my neck that I was being followed, observed, stalked by some unnatural being.

I looked at my friend who was still supporting me, and even through the increasing fog that clouded my mind I noticed his warmth at my side and his steady movements, trudging on beside me as if nothing had changed, as if the whole snow-clad plain had not been turned into a ghostly menagerie. And then, as I watched his figure, a horrible doubt took hold of my mind, and I was no longer sure that he still was who I deemed him to be, and would not turn his face towards me a moment later to look at me with sightless eyes. With growing desperation I fought against the bile that rose in my throat, knowing only that if I allowed my feverish mind to descend into panic, it would surely be the end of me. I attempted to speak to Holmes, but no words passed my lips; I, who have met countless dangers and am not once guilty of cowardice, did not dare to challenge the things I feared I would see if he showed me his face.

And then I heard the hunting horns.

I have no words to describe the nameless dread that overwhelmed my senses and squeezed the air out of my lungs. My conscious thought must have left me, for I have some vague recollection of stumbling forward as frantically as my burning limbs would permit, but I did not know where I was headed, and I had forgotten where I was and why I was there. All I knew in that horrible moment was that I was doomed, for all around me there was a riot of snorting horses and shouting voices and barking hounds, and even though I could see no more than moving shadows, the unspeakable noises left no doubt in my clouded mind that I had fallen prey to my worst nightmare.

Through the turmoil I was dimly aware of a figure making its way toward me. It was the silhouette of a man, and I could not fathom who it may be, except for…

“Harry, is that you?”

_Jack?_

A hand gripped my arm, but it might as well have been a claw, so sharply did the fingers dig into my skin. I drew a sharp breath and feebly tried to pull away, but my aching limbs disobeyed me.

“The Hunt, Harry,” I managed, sure that he would remember, would know what to do. “I can hear them…”

_They’re not here for you, Jack! You have to…_

“…keep going, Watson, for God’s sake, hold on!”

I finally managed to wind my arm from his grip and stumbled forward, only to be overcome by a wave of nausea and the horrible, gut-wrenching certainty that I was trapped and had no chance of escape. Eventually I stood still, not quite sure how to keep myself upright in the madly spinning world, only knowing that I must not give in, lest the horrible creatures that were surrounding me would get a hold on me and drag me into the abyss.

“Watson!”

The voice dimly permeated the thick fog that clouded my mind, and I noted distantly that it sounded more frantic than this particular voice had any right to sound. Suddenly a face appeared in front of me, a dear, familiar face, and I reached out for it, half expecting my hand to pass through thin air.

I found solid flesh.

“Watson, stay with me, old fellow… not far now…”

“Run, Holmes,” I attempted to plead, but I am not sure that any sound passed my dry lips. Then the ground rushed towards me and I was vaguely aware of strong arms catching my body and holding it close. The last thing I perceived before darkness engulfed my senses were the distinct sounds of dogs howling and hooves thundering as they passed us by and disappeared into the direction we had come from.

 

I have no clear recollection of the following thirty-six hours at the very least, in which I must have slipped in and out of consciousness and the reassuring awareness of my friend’s presence alternated with horrible visions sprung from the collective nightmares of my people. It was already early afternoon on January 2nd when I finally awoke with a reasonably clear mind and only a mild headache reminding me of the ordeal I had endured. I was resting in a comfortable bed in a cosy little hotel room, and Holmes, who was perched on a chair beside me, welcomed me with a smile considerably warmer than it was his usual habit.

“Glad to see you awake, my boy,” he greeted me blithely. “It is about time you came around. You gave us quite a cause for concern.”

“I’m sorry, Holmes,” I assured him, labouredly looking around to take in my surroundings. “Are we in Snowshill? How did you manage to get us to safety?”

“I’m afraid to say that I had to drag you the rest of the way, Watson. You were too heavy for me to carry, but it was only half an hour to go, so I figured that it would do. You may have to invest in new boots.”

“You should have left me there and gone for help, Holmes. It was a dangerous undertaking.”

“You would have frozen to death in the meantime. And there was no danger beside the cold, which was negligible.”

“But the horses…”

“You were hallucinating, Watson. It really was unforgivable of me to drag you out of our comfortable lodgings when clearly you had not quite recovered. You were talking in your fever, but there was no one there besides you and me.”

“Of course not.” I paused for a moment to process the information and felt a wave of shame overtaking me. I prided myself of being a scholar, a scientifically educated and reasonable man, and yet I had reacted with unrestricted terror to the spectres unleashed by the superstitious believes of the old folk.

“You were not yourself at the time.” Holmes patted my arm in an awkward emulation of comforting bedside manners. “Think of it no more.”

“That may be for the best.” I closed my eyes briefly. “Have you sorted out the matter of Sir Patterson? I trust he has been apprehended?”

“Ah, Watson.” My friend’s countenance was suddenly grave. “No, indeed, he has not, and never will be. He is dead.”

“Dead? But how…”

“It appears that our daring escape from the attic, inadvisable as it may have been in your condition, has saved both our lives. Only a few hours after our departure the house was destroyed by a large fire, which seems to have originated in the kitchen and very quickly set the whole domicile alight. The inhabitants must have been surprised in their sleep, for there are no survivors.” He paused with a furrowed brow. “That detail is a little strange, in fact, for surely someone must have been guarding the attic door. But it is too late to make anything of it now. I am told the site is so thoroughly burned that hardly any wall has been left standing.”

In the silence that followed I tried very hard not to think of the ghostly clutter of hooves I had heard passing us by as if heading for another destination. Surely it was no more than a coincidence.

 

_Epilogue_

“Your pipe? My dear Watson, it is hardly my fault if you are unable to look out for your own pipe. For all we know, it may have been devoured by the pet sheep Stackhurst keeps in his garden.”

“I rather thought of your lion-maned sea monster. You know, the one I had the questionable delight of reading about in your sensational account of the affair of McPherson and the dog.” Holmes gives me a look of playful indignation, and I answer with a pronounced sigh. “Nevertheless, it is a painful loss. I should have left it at home.”

We are in the process of returning from our habitual evening stroll along the cliffs, and in the darkness the yellow light that shines from the windows of our cottage promises a comfortable evening with a nice book, a glass of brandy, a dancing fire and each other’s company. I begin to quicken my pace, for the wintry cold is biting here at the coast where the wind carries the chill under one’s garments and blows little particles of ice against one’s face even when the sky is clear.

I have not walked far when all at once my companion grabs my arm and points a hand to the sky, and there against the darkness I see a swift gleaming movement that has already almost faded when it catches my eye.

We watch the starry darkness for a silent moment before Holmes speaks in an almost meditative fashion: “Someone told me once that you can make a wish upon a falling star.”

“Really?” I chuckle softly at his words. “That’s curious. But then, you see, someone told me once that one should pay no heed to such an outrageous superstition.”

“Indeed.” He pauses, never turning his eyes from the sky, and there is a tinge of amusement in his voice. “Someone may have been a little supercilious at the time.”

“You don’t say.”

For a while we remain in comfortable silence while my mind wanders back to that night almost four decades ago. It was a terrible night, one that I do not care to recall too closely, yet there is no doubt about the significance it held for my life in all the years that followed. The stories I have told during a lifetime of acquaintance with Sherlock Holmes are not fairy tales, even though I once doubted that such a creature as him could exist outside the realm of legend. My stories are, on the forefront, tales of mysteries and adventure, of brilliant cleverness and cold reasoning, but I also pride myself of having preserved in those pages the one unique friendship and loyalty and love I have always treasured most in my life.

Besides, I must confess that my own wish, the one I made all those years ago, did come true.

“Can it be,” I enquire after a while, and there is no way he could mistake the gentle teasing in my voice, “that the great Sherlock Holmes is descending into the realms of romanticism and begins to believe in miraculous wish-fulfillment? You are getting old, my friend.”

“Ah, Watson, as much as it pains me, I am afraid I cannot tell you that.” There is a twinkle in his eye, and the smile on his weathered face expresses all the affection of a lifetime. “After all, they say the wish only comes true when it remains a secret, do they not?”

With that he turns and walks toward the cottage, his walking stick swinging carelessly at his side as though he were thirty years younger, and my heart is filled with joy and thankfulness at the sight.

I make my own wish in silence before I follow him, and never will I let a single soul know what it contains.


End file.
